Bear with me... Please: "In November 1966, the work of 33-year old avant-garde artist Yoko Ono was among the art being featured at the Indica Gallery in London, in an exhibition titled Unfinished Paintings and Objects. At the time, Ono was in the process of finalizing her divorce from her second husband. She had come to London to focus on her art in an attempt to grieve and heal from heartbreak.
The Indica was owned by a friend of Paul McCartney’s, who invited his friend and fellow Beatle, John Lennon to visit the exhibition. Despite not being a particular lover of art, Lennon agreed, later claiming it’s because he was told there would be a living-art piece featuring an orgy in a bag. (There wasn’t.) While there, Lennon, just 25 years old and at that point well on his way to becoming one of the most famous men in the world, saw the exorbitant price tags on the overly-simplistic, boringly inflammatory, or conceptual art and mused to his companions “This is a con! What the hell is this?”
As he continued through the gallery, he came across a display set in darkness, on a raised white panel with a flood light set up to illuminate it. The display featured a standard-sized wooden ladder, with a magnifying glass hanging on a chain above it. On the ceiling was a piece of clear glass. Lennon climbed the ladder, grabbed the magnifier and moved it across the piece of clear glass until it found, in tiny letters handwritten in black ink, a single word: Yes.
Later, Lennon said that what he felt while looking at that tiny “Yes.” was relief. “It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say ‘no’ or ‘f**k you’ or something. It says ‘yes.’” Ono described the piece as being about the discovery of hope, even when it’s hard to find. If you complete the task of climbing the ladder, and searching for it, you will find the affirmative. You will find hope. They married in 1969 and were together until Lennon’s death in 1980."
